March 4, 2002
The Enron Corporation gave the Taliban millions of dollars in a no-holds-barred bid to strike a deal for an energy pipeline in Afghanistan -- wile the Taliban were already sheltering terror kingpin Osama Bin Laden!
Enron executives even met with Taliban officials in Texas, where they were given the red-carpet treatment and promised a fortune if the deal went through.
That's the bombshell finding of an exclusive ENQUIRER investigation into the collapse of the company that ripped off Americans for millions of dollars. The ENQUIRER has also uncovered that some of the Enron money wound up supporting Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network!
"Enron would do business with the devil if it would make the company money!" said a member of a Congressional committee investigating the company's collapse.
And Atul Davda, who worked as a senior director for Enron's International Division until the company's collapse, confirmed to The ENQUIRER: "Enron had intimate contact with Taliban officials. Building the pipeline was one of the corporation's prime objectives."
As The ENQUIRER revealed two weeks ago, Enron secretly employed CIA agents to carry out its dealings overseas. And a CIA insider disclosed : "Enron was wooing the Taliban and was willing to make the Taliban a partner in the operation of a pipeline through Afghanistan.
"Enron proposed to pay the Taliban large sums of money in a 'tax' on every cubic foot of gas and oil shipped through the pipeline."
Enron shelled out more than $400 million for a feasibility study on the pipeline and "a large portion of that cost was payoffs to the Taliban," said the CIA source.
Shockingly, Enron's wooing of the Taliban continued even after Al Qaeda agents bombed two American embassies in Africa in 1998, and the U.S. retaliated with missile attacks on suspected Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Sudan.
"The U.S. was shooting missiles into Afghanistan, and it was clear that the Taliban were enabling Bin Laden and Al Qaeda," terrorist expert Jeffrey Steinberg, editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, told The ENQUIRER.
"Nonetheless the oil companies continued to work behind the scenes to complete the pipeline deal."
The pipeline project was originally proposed by Unocal Corporation.
And an FBI source told The ENQUIRER : "Enron and Unocal dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan and the Taliban. The pipeline would relieve our dependence on Saudi Arabia -- and Enron would make billions.
"When Clinton was bombing Bin Laden camps in Afghanistan in 1998, Enron was making payoffs to Taliban and Bin Laden operatives to keep the pipeline project alive. And there's no way that anyone could NOT have known of the Taliban and Bin Laden connection at that time, especially Enron who had CIA agents on its payroll!"
Said an Enron company source, "After the Taliban came to power in 1996, Tliban leaders were invited to Sugar Land, Texas, by Unocal and Enron executives.
"The Taliban's mullahs were given the royal treatment for four days in 1997!"
The visit was aimed at getting Taliban cooperation to build the pipeline, which would carry vast gas and oil deposits from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Enron had exclusive contracts with the former Russian republics, according to another former Enron employee.
The pipeline was to travel through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
When contacted by The ENQUIRER, U.S. State Department's press officer for South Asian Affairs, Len Scensny, confirmed that a Taliban delegation visited Sugar Land, Teas, in 1997 to discuss business with oil companies.
Three days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Unocal announced it had withdrawn from the Afghanistan pipeline project.
But the CIA insider said Enron and its CEO Kenneth Lay held on, waiting for the Taliban to give up Bin Laden as the Bush administration was demanding.
"Enron figured the Taliban wanted to stick to their deal, that they wanted riches the same way Enron did.
"What Enron and Ken Lay didn't understand is that it was Bin Laden who was calling the shots, not Enron's Taliban friends.
"Now Enron and the Taliban are both goners!"